Page 41 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 1-2: The Language of Neoliberal Education, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 41
m. olssen ■ neoliberalism and laissez-faire: the retreat from naturalism
In a sound society, leadership, responsibility, and exemplary defense of
society’s guiding norms and values must be the exalted duty and unchal-
lengeable right of a minority that forms and is willingly and respectfully
recognized as the apex of the social pyramid hierarchically structured by
performance…. What we need is true nobilitas naturalis…. We need a nat-
ural nobility whose authority is, fortunately, readily accepted by all men,
an elite deriving its title solely from supreme performance and peerless
moral example and invested with the moral dignity of such a life …. No
free society…which threatens to degenerate into mass society, can subsist
without such a class of censors…. (p. 131)
Röpke adds that “the task of leadership falls to the natural aristocra-
cy by virtue of an unwritten but therefore no less valid right which is in-
distinguishable from duty” (p. 133). Only such persons can save us from
the “slowly spreading cancers of our western economy and society” (p. 151),
which include the “irresistible advance of the welfare state …” (p 151).
Hayek and Neoliberalism
Did Friedrich Hayek also accept this new view of ‘economic politics’? My
answer is not in the same sort of way, although he shared their pro-free
market values that they supported. Hayek was too steeped in the classi-
cal liberal tradition to easily give up its naturalistic assumptions concern-
ing laissez-faire and the conception of the subject who should be trusted
as a rational, autonomous citizen and who should remain unconditioned
or uncoerced by the state. Yet the theoretical difficulties that afflicted
Simons, Buchanan, Eücken, and Röpke, also weighed heavily on Hayek.
He not only struggled with the notion of laissez-faire, but also appreciated
that over time the democratic will of citizens tends to favour restrictions
on the free market economics and supports an expanded role for govern-
ment as respects to both welfare and redistribution.2
Although I have written several articles and chapters on Hayek, one
is always learning new things. In a PhD doctoral viva voce examination
on Foucault and neoliberalism that I had the honour to examine at the
University of Brighton in 2018, Lars Cornelissen, the disputant, alerted
me to several works of Hayek that I had been unaware of. One was an arti-
cle by Hayek, titled ‘Marktwirtschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik’3, published
2 Hayek blames this on the fact that the prevailing conception of democracy, is as Cornelis-
sen puts it, “rooted in the collectivist tradition, and that as a result, ‘the particular set of in-
stitutions which today prevails in all Western democracies’ is inherently inclined towards
unlimited government” (2017a: p. 246). Cornelissen cites Hayek, Law, Legislation and Lib-
erty, (2013: p. 345); New Studies, (1978, pp. 92, 107, 155).
3 ‘Market Economy and Economic Politics’ (translation).
39
In a sound society, leadership, responsibility, and exemplary defense of
society’s guiding norms and values must be the exalted duty and unchal-
lengeable right of a minority that forms and is willingly and respectfully
recognized as the apex of the social pyramid hierarchically structured by
performance…. What we need is true nobilitas naturalis…. We need a nat-
ural nobility whose authority is, fortunately, readily accepted by all men,
an elite deriving its title solely from supreme performance and peerless
moral example and invested with the moral dignity of such a life …. No
free society…which threatens to degenerate into mass society, can subsist
without such a class of censors…. (p. 131)
Röpke adds that “the task of leadership falls to the natural aristocra-
cy by virtue of an unwritten but therefore no less valid right which is in-
distinguishable from duty” (p. 133). Only such persons can save us from
the “slowly spreading cancers of our western economy and society” (p. 151),
which include the “irresistible advance of the welfare state …” (p 151).
Hayek and Neoliberalism
Did Friedrich Hayek also accept this new view of ‘economic politics’? My
answer is not in the same sort of way, although he shared their pro-free
market values that they supported. Hayek was too steeped in the classi-
cal liberal tradition to easily give up its naturalistic assumptions concern-
ing laissez-faire and the conception of the subject who should be trusted
as a rational, autonomous citizen and who should remain unconditioned
or uncoerced by the state. Yet the theoretical difficulties that afflicted
Simons, Buchanan, Eücken, and Röpke, also weighed heavily on Hayek.
He not only struggled with the notion of laissez-faire, but also appreciated
that over time the democratic will of citizens tends to favour restrictions
on the free market economics and supports an expanded role for govern-
ment as respects to both welfare and redistribution.2
Although I have written several articles and chapters on Hayek, one
is always learning new things. In a PhD doctoral viva voce examination
on Foucault and neoliberalism that I had the honour to examine at the
University of Brighton in 2018, Lars Cornelissen, the disputant, alerted
me to several works of Hayek that I had been unaware of. One was an arti-
cle by Hayek, titled ‘Marktwirtschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik’3, published
2 Hayek blames this on the fact that the prevailing conception of democracy, is as Cornelis-
sen puts it, “rooted in the collectivist tradition, and that as a result, ‘the particular set of in-
stitutions which today prevails in all Western democracies’ is inherently inclined towards
unlimited government” (2017a: p. 246). Cornelissen cites Hayek, Law, Legislation and Lib-
erty, (2013: p. 345); New Studies, (1978, pp. 92, 107, 155).
3 ‘Market Economy and Economic Politics’ (translation).
39
